Best Web Conference Solution: Gold Award for Netviewer
toptenreviews.com Carries out Extensive Test of Leading Providers

Following a wide-ranging test comparing products from different providers, Netviewer Meet 6.0 was presented with the Gold Award for the best web conference solution by toptenreviews.com. On its website, TopTenREVIEWS, headquartered in Ogden, Utah, features in-depth technology tests and product comparisons in more than 350 categories. Recently it undertook a comparison of twelve products marketed by the world’s foremost web conference providers. The only product which received the highest rating (“Excellent”) for all criteria and which therefore came out top in the comparison was Netviewer Meet. TopTenREVIEWS’s verdict: “We ranked this product #1 because it is the only service that we felt deserved a perfect score for ease of use”. Netviewer Meet emerged from this test ahead of web conferencing products offered by Adobe, Microsoft, Cisco WebEx and Citrix.

Netviewer is Europe’s leading producer and provider of web collaboration solutions, offering visual real-time communications by means of user-friendly web conferences – ad hoc and without any technical impediments. Netviewer Meet is already available to business clients in software-as-a-service form for a monthly fee of €29.90 (USD 39,90). Netviewer is free for private or non-commercial usage.

http://web-conferencing-services.toptenreviews.com

http://www.netviewer.com

WebEx has launched web conferencing service on smart phones, enabling users to join Cisco WebEx Meeting Center web and audio conferences on smartphones including the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve 8900, and BlackBerry Storm from RIM, the Nokia E71, Nokia E75, Nokia N97, and other Nokia Eseries and Nseries, and the Samsung Blackjack II.

Users will be able to launch Cisco WebEx Meeting Center through the browser on their smartphones to receive integrated audio and web conferencing over 3G or a combination of 2G and Wi-Fi. In addition, users will be able to attend a scheduled meeting and to view presentations, applications and desktops with live annotations. This offering is planned to be available on several smartphone operating systems including BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. There is no cost to attend these meetings, but to schedule and host a meeting from a computer requires a host account on Cisco WebEx Meeting Center.

ON24 Webcast Center next-generation social webcasting

ON24’s open, next-generation webcasting application delivers social webcasting capabilities and enhanced interactivity. It enables our customers to create completely custom experiences for their audiences and to integrate applications developed by third-party developers. Combining advanced virtual event technology with a highly reliable and scalable platform for webcasting, ON24 delivers immersive, measurable solutions to more effectively engage audiences.

ON24 Webcast Center provides the necessary tools to build and deliver live and on-demand webcasts, with detailed reporting and analysis. Extend your reach by delivering webcasts to users on all platforms—your audience can access your content directly through the web, with no need for dial-in numbers or conference calls. The ON24 Webcast Center platform is offered in a SaaS model, enabling you to access the tools from any browser. The ON24 cloud webcasting platform remains the industry’s most reliable and secure solution for all your webcasting needs.

ON24 social webcasting features and benefits

•Powerful social media capabilities
•Highly customizable
•Reliable platform
•Enhanced communication and interaction with your audience
•Advanced measurement and performance tools
•New group chat feature to drive interactivity between presenters and attendees

Brand yourself through customized social webcasting
ON24 Webcast Center provides extensive customization of your virtual events. From branded audience consoles to custom registration pages and HTML emails, your events are designed to your specification and to strengthen your brand.

Social media engage your audience
Social media are critically important to online marketing and communications initiatives. By opening the Webcast Center platform to third-party components, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Social webcasting capabilities include Twitter, group chat, moderated Q&A and sharing tools.

Live video webcasts, on-demand training and podcasts
ON24 supports multiple platforms and media formats and a wide range of virtual events you can use to reach your audience. Live webcasts are automatically archived and can be leveraged as on-demand events, delivered to users as podcasts, or used as powerful rich media advertising content in your web and email marketing campaigns.

Performance-based engagement
ON24 leads the industry in reporting capabilities to help you measure the success of your events and capture the best leads. Easily track ROI of your lead campaigns, measure the effectiveness of your content and analyze the engagement level of your audience.

Presenters–take control
ON24’s unique Presentation Manager interface makes it easy to manage a successful event alone or in a geographically dispersed team. The streamlined interface runs in any browser, enables control to be shared among presenters, and allows you to dazzle your audience with video, audio, slides, Flash media, demos and web tours. You and your team can easily manage live Q&A, push polls and surveys to your audience and gather statistics in real time.

To read the press release click here.
To see it in action, check out ON24’s demo.

Copied from Adobe’s blog: See orginal post

By Steve Adler on February 25, 2010 8:03 AM

I have tested the links and they link back to previous articles on the subject matter.

Communication on web can yield big biz results
Web collaborative technologies drive efficiency and add value to productivity of businesses

Accelerating Business and Increasing Sales

The service based companies’ have definitely jumped hard and heavy into these tools. Though larger organizations may view online collaboration tools primarily to improve internal communications, this segment is leveraging its investments to pump up a normally small sales force and provide training so product pitches can be perfected.

Such operational streamlining helps a company run more efficiently and at web-based speed. Sales teams now can take clients through a hands-on demonstration without either leaving the office. Not only does knowledge transfer vastly cut travel costs, but it also accelerates business and provides more promise in reaching busy executives who can view demos from their office desk, rather than a meeting room or off-site location.

Service based companies usually measure themselves closely through productivity or efficiency units. So if they can conduct 10 sales demos in a day instead of one or two, they’ve made their money.

The current trend across various business segments seems to be of adopting web-based conferencing in order to expand the reach of their messaging. The financial industry, often an early adopter of emerging technologies, also is a big believer in the power of these communications services. For example, a small mutual fund firm that needs to get the word out to their clients, and they need to get people with as much impact as possible. These tools can help firms like this to a great extent.

Consider daily tasks that can be aided or enhanced using the online collaboration services. For example, companies have discovered that their IT staff can troubleshoot and remotely fix computer problems in the field by opening an online meeting session. Such remote access could prove the deal-sealer if done just prior to an important presentation.

Collaboration: The Next Phase in Business Productivity

There is no question that web collaborative technologies drive efficiency. While the value proposition is widely recognized, measuring the real impact of the technology on information worker productivity and ultimately the impact on profitability remains a key challenge.

The challenge lies not in the benefits, but in the way they have been measured. Using a structured methodology to evaluate “hard” as well as “soft” returns from the investment in web collaboration enables organizations to quantify the impact that the solution will have on productivity. This ensures that any cost-benefit technology analysis accurately reflects not just travel cost savings but also the impact on employee productivity.

Cisco has released free software updates that address these vulnerabilities. Prior to deploying software, customers should consult their maintenance provider or check the software for feature set compatibility and known issues specific to their environment.

A live demonstration (application sharing) gives you FLEXIBILITY.

Flexibility to meet the needs/questions of the lives audience.

Flexibility to manage time allotment – being able to demonstrate more or less depending on what time is available.

Flexibility to “go back” and show it again or go in more depth if needed.

Flexibility to application share anything on your desktop.

A recorded demonstration gives you PEACE OF MIND.

Peace of mind that the presenter does not need to be on a “great internet connection” or even logged into the “network” during the live webinar.

Peace of mind that there is no “delay” in the “refresh rate” and thus the video will appear to run smoother.

Peace of mind that you know how long the demo takes, covered everything, and didn’t make any “mistakes”.

Feel free to post your comments and let us know your preference!

WMV Converter Console (left image), HFP Files (upper right image), Single WMV file with HFP content included (lower right image)

A Clear Skies’ customer recently asked why the WMV created by the “Recording Converter for Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007″ which you can download here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101215971033.aspx was so big.  This was my reply:

I can see why you might be confused with differences in WMV file sizes.  First, all recordings are available in HFP (High-Fidelity Presentation) format and WMV format, directly from the Live Meeting recording page.  If you are logged in as an organizer in Live Meeting and have download recordings enabled, both formats will be available to you.  However, to see the WMV format as an option, you must be logged in using Internet Explorer browser.

Secondly, this WMV version is smaller because it only captures a flat image of the slides (and does not include builds and animations).  Although it also captures application sharing, it does not capture presenter video, multimedia video, or survey links (if applicable).

And lastly, the “WMV converter” that you used takes the HFP file which includes all the builds and animations, plus presenter video, multimedia video and survey links and converts it into a WMV file with everything still intact.

In general, file sizes increase in size with duration, application sharing, video, and presenter video used.  If you are not using rich multimedia and you can break out your builds into separate sizes, I would advise using the WMV file available from your LM download page.  It will have the smallest file that you need to host.

VirtualEdge talked with Aaron Cole founder and CEO of Clear Skies Virtual Event Producers recently about what has become a common occurrence in the virtual event industry…experienced webcasting and event producers leaving to form new companies to service the growing demand for virtual event and meeting solutions.  Many of the startups have a similar story to Clear Skies, 10 plus years of working in the virtual event and meeting space; in this case, most of the team is from Microsoft Live Meeting where they did extensive webcasting and webinar programs.

“Our existing clients are more of the traditional brick and mortar types of companies versus tech companies and they don’t have the staff and expertise to produce webcasts and more sophisticated events in-house,” said Cole. “We offer a full service model where we provide everything from planning to production and management but there are cases where we just support specific pieces of the event as well.”

Companies are increasingly looking for consultants that have experience across multiple platforms and technologies because there are so many options and a wide variety of meeting types and needs. “We plan to remain platform agnostic so that we can offer our clients the best solution for their event needs. But that is a lot of work –keeping up to date on all of the solutions available—something our clients couldn’t do internally,” noted Cole. “We need to be the ones out there spotting trends and bringing them back to the client because they are just too busy running their business.”

What Clear Skies is looking for now is more interactivity and moving away from the webinar model where people show up, consume the content and leave. “This format had been working pretty well for clients in terms of generating leads but it is time to take it to the next level.”

At Virtual Edge, we think we’ll see more and more of these new firms being born and the continued expansion of digital agencies and event management companies into the virtual event space as their clients marketing and colloboration practices change forever.  See more about Clear Skies at Clear Skies Virtual Event Producers

This comparison website has been assembled by a company named Publicare, an online marketing agency based out of Frankfurt Germany. Publicare has taken 22 web conferencing platforms and ranked them on a scale of 1-10, on various categories: User friendliness, Number and scope of features, Pricing/cost transparency, etc. In addition to a numbered ranking, Publicare posts comments about their testing of the product and provides links to the vendor website, or free trial. Publicare’s efforts have yielded a comprehensive, informed and useful comparison of platforms that can be of great benefit. First time users of Webinar technology will admire the overall ranking system to quickly identify various costs and strengths of platforms, while seasoned webinar jockeys can dig deeper to uncover specific features that may help determine future purchasing decisions.

We should point out that this comparison is aimed at the collaboration use-case of webinars – smaller, less structured environments where collaboration is key (note WebEx MeetMeNow 2.3 is tested, not WebEx Event Center; no distinction is called out between Live Meeting Standard or Professional for example). Our use of webinar technology – the “One to Many” model – therefore is not discussed or ranked. Furthermore, we feel it’s this focus on collaborative environments that has lead Publicare to not include some of the streaming platform providers who are doing business in the “One to Many” world, like ON24, Stream57 or TalkPoint. Finally, the creation and maintenance of this website is funded by affiliate partnerships – if a visitor visits one of the ranked platforms and happens to purchase the software, Publicare receives a small finders fee. Publicare is quick to stress that this financial support does not affect their rankings, but is simply a means to recover some of the cost.

Overall, this is a great comparison tool, and we are grateful to Publicare for their time and efforts. While the comparisons are not an exact match to our business model, they none the less provide valuable information and insight into an otherwise cluttered, and noisy marketplace. Take a look, enjoy, and let us know what you think.